Ahead of the TechStars Sydney ‘Demo the Future’ evening on December 8, Startup Daily is profiling the 12 startups and their founders in the 2025 cohort.
Our next profile is Sedso AI – helping brands to shape their own story with AI.
Sedso AI
Founders: David Sta.Maria & Silven Epistola
One-liner: Sedso is an AI visibility platform that helps brands optimise how AI systems perceive, describe, and recommend them.
What’s the future of search and discovery?
Asked about the future of discovery, Sta.Maria does not pause to think. He believes the shift is already well underway.
“AI is becoming the default path for how people choose where to study, eat, travel, shop, bank, and engage,” he said.
“If you are not represented correctly in AI answers, you are not represented in the customer’s decision at all. That is the new reality.”
Watching how quickly people now default to AI when looking for recommendations, information, or reassurance, Sta.Maria doesn’t feel he’s exaggerating the uptake.
“The shift feels less like a prediction and more like something already unfolding in everyday behaviour,” he said.
And the data backs him up. According to McKinsey & Co., 50% of consumers already use AI powered search today. Gartner, in parallel, forecasts a 25% decline in global search-engine query volume by 2026, driven largely by the rapid shift from traditional search to AI-generated answers.
What’s the problem and why does it matter?
“The problem is simple. Discovery is shifting to AI, people trust what it says, and most brands have not been given a way to understand or manage that shift,” Sta.Maria said
“Customer behaviour has changed, but marketing budgets remain tied to SEO, paid search, and content.”
His co-founder, CTO Silven Epistola, explains why this shift confuses traditional marketers:
“AI does not behave like traditional search engines,” he said.
“Search indexes pages. But AI generates meaning. It forms its own understanding of a brand by inferring patterns across the information it can access.
“When the underlying signals are unclear or inconsistent, the model makes its own assumptions, and that internal version may not match how a brand wants to be represented.”
The pair say the gap between how people search and how brands prepare for that search is widening quickly.
Explain the product to a potential user
When asked to describe Sedso to a potential customer, Epistola explains: “Sedso gives brands their first clear view of how AI systems actually talk about them. What AI says. What it recommends. Who it compares you to. And just as importantly, it shows you where your story is strong, where it is unclear, and what you can do to show up stronger inside AI.”
It’s an answer which excites brand marketers.
“When we share the results with marketing teams the reaction is immediate,” he said.
Epistola points out that the platform has been built specifically for AI systems, rather than retrofitted from SEO logic.
“Sedso is designed to help companies understand and influence the way AI interprets them,” he said
“It’s more than just AI analysing AI. We probe language models, then use machine learning, statistical methods, and data science to analyse those responses and uncover the narratives of how a brand shows up in AI.”
David summarises Sedso in one line:
“Whether you’re ready for it or not, every brand now has an AI reputation. Sedso is the way to understand it and make it stronger.”
Why did Techstars invest?
Techstars Sydney Managing Director Christie Jenkins says startups are expected to move fast. But Sedso are next level.
“There’s fast, and then there is Dave and Silven-speed,” she laughs.
“Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. In the first four weeks of the company they validated the idea with more than 20 customer discovery conversations, then built the full phase 1 of the product – not just an MVP, and they signed over 50 customers to their waitlist through one-on-one sales calls. Their speed is off the charts. They are setting a wildly high standard for other founders.”
Jenkins is also impressed by the synergy of the founders
“The other thing I love is the co-founder dynamic,” she said.
“David is one of the most articulate people in the world. And as humble as Silven is as the CTO, dig deeper into the tech and you’ll understand they’ve coded from the ground up using first principles thinking.”
The long term ambition
“Today, our product gives brands visibility into how AI systems perceive them,” Sta.Maria said.
“It shows how they are being described, recommended, and represented inside AI. This capability alone completely changes how marketing teams think.”
The next phase goes deeper.
“We want to help brands understand what shapes that perception,” he explains.
“Which signals matter. What influences the models. The exact things brands should change to improve their results in AI discovery.”
Then the long-term goal is even more ambitious …
“Ultimately, we want Sedso to be the control layer for AI-driven discovery,” Sta.Maria said.
“A place where brands understand how AI sees them, and where they can shape that perception with confidence. AI is becoming the new gatekeeper of relevance, and our goal is to give brands real agency in that world.”
The most important lesson from Techstars Sydney
The founders credit Techstars Sydney with shaping how they operate as a team.
“Techstars taught us to move with conviction,” they share.
“You never get perfect information, so you learn to act, learn, and act again. Progress comes from momentum, not from waiting for the perfect moment.”
While there were some “hard weeks”, the pair repeated this line to themselves. It became something of a mantra: “Do not get paralysed. Keep going. There is always one more round in you.”
What does AI say about you?
AI discovery is already here. People now ask AI, not search engines, for answers.
“Today, the story AI tells about your brand becomes the story people believe. Reach out if you want to know what story AI is telling,” Sta.Maria said .
“Every brand deserves the power to shape that story. Sedso exists to make sure AI does not define your narrative without you, so that the way you appear tomorrow is because your brand said so.”
- See Sedso and the Techstars startups in action at Demo the Future, Monday December 8, 5-8pm. Details here.
- Read about the other Techstars Sydney startups here.
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